When Gods Die (8 page)

His hands gripped hers where they lay entwined against his satin waistcoat. After a moment, he turned in her arms, and whatever she’d seen earlier in his eyes was gone—or carefully hidden away. “It seems a strange piece for a woman to wear with an evening gown, is it not?”

“I’d have said so, yes.” She held the necklace out to him. “What color was the gown?”

“Green.” He took the necklace and slipped it into his pocket.

“That makes it even more strange. How does Anglessey say his wife came to have the necklace?”

“Somehow it didn’t seem the right time to ask.”

Kat nodded. “I remember when she married him. It caused quite a stir. She was so young and beautiful.”

Devlin’s lips curled up into an ironic smile. “Whereas he was simply very rich. And a Marquis, of course.”

“Do you think he killed her…or had her killed?”

“If she was playing him false with the Regent, it would seem to give him a motive—not only to murder his wife, but to leave her body in a way that would implicate the man who was cuckolding him.”

“
If
she was playing him false with the Regent.”

“Or if he thought she was.”

“Anglessey didn’t need to agree to allow Paul Gibson to perform an autopsy on his wife’s body,” Kat pointed out. “The fact that he did would seem to suggest that he has nothing to hide.”

“Perhaps. We’ll know more when Gibson’s had a chance to do a thorough postmortem.” Devlin went to pick up his driving coat. “Anglessey himself claims to suspect his nephew, Bevan Ellsworth.”

“Now, there’s a man who’s capable of murder.”

He glanced at her in surprise. “You know him?”

“He had one of the chorus girls from the theater in keeping last year. She found him charming—and unpredictably vicious.”

“That sounds like Ellsworth, all right.” He threw his coat over his arm, then hesitated in a way that was unusual for him.

Kat tipped her head, a smile playing about her lips as she studied his face. “Out with it.”

His eyes widened in a parody of innocence. “Out with what?”

She came to take his hat and set it at a rakish angle on his head. “Whatever it is you’re circling around to asking me to do.”

He smiled and caught her to him to nuzzle her neck in a way that made her laugh. “Well, there is one little thing….”

Chapter 14

T
hey were called the Upper Ten Thousand, that small cadre of men and women of birth and fortune who formed the top crust of English society and occupied the manor houses and grand estates that were the sine qua non of English respectability. Bound to each other by ties of blood and marriage, they rode to hounds together, belonged to the same clubs and subscription rooms, and sent their sons to the same schools—to Winchester and Eton, Cambridge and Oxford.

Like Sebastian, the Marquis of Anglessey’s nephew and heir presumptive, Bevan Ellsworth, had been sent to Eton. Sebastian had vague memories of a sporting lad with a ready laugh and a well-hidden but savage will to get his own back at anyone he thought had wronged him. But the two years that separated them had been enough to limit their interaction at that age. And whereas Sebastian went to Oxford, Ellsworth had gone to Cambridge. He’d eventually become a barrister, although he was said to spend considerably more time in the gaming hells around Pickering Place than in court.

Being a barrister was considered a respectable occupation for a gentleman. Because barristers could only be engaged by solicitors rather than directly by clients, barristers were not considered to be
in trade,
with all the vulgar associations that entailed. Thus, a barrister’s wife could be presented in court, whereas the wife of a solicitor could not—a subtle but important distinction for a man who expected to become the next Earl of Anglessey.

Sebastian ran across the Marquis’s nephew sharing a glass of wine with a friend in Brooks’s late that afternoon. Pausing just inside the entrance to the club’s red drawing room, Sebastian took a moment to study the man Bevan Ellsworth had become.

He had the same open, pleasant countenance Sebastian remembered, his warm brown hair worn in the style of disarray favored by those who followed Beau Brummel’s set. Ellsworth had something of a reputation as a dandy himself, his coat of Bath superfine being of a fashionable cut and his cravat intricately tied without falling into the extremes affected by some. But the broad set of his shoulders showed that he also considered himself something of a Corinthian, boxing at Jackson’s and fencing at Angelo’s and shooting wafers at Menton’s.

The gentleman beside him, a fair-skinned man with flaxen hair and an exaggerated neckcloth, looked vaguely familiar, although Sebastian couldn’t quite place him. Snagging a glass of Madeira from a passing waiter, Sebastian went to slouch with deliberate insouciance into the empty seat opposite the two men. “I understand congratulations are in order,” he said, interrupting their conversation without preamble or apology.

Ellsworth stiffened and swung his head to fix Sebastian with a cold stare. “I beg your pardon?”

Sebastian smiled. “Surely you’re not going to pretend you haven’t heard about the death of your dear aunt Guinevere? Everything that threatened to stand between you and Anglessey’s title and fortune has now been removed. Hence”—Sebastian lifted his glass in a kind of toast—“congratulations.”

The unknown gentleman with the flaxen hair and monstrous neckcloth met Sebastian’s steely gaze for one fleeting instant, then slipped quietly away to go stand nervously at the far end of the room.

“That’s always assuming, of course,” Sebastian added as if in afterthought, “that you were nowhere near Brighton on Wednesday last?”

A faint but discernible line of color touched Ellsworth’s cheekbones. “Don’t be ridiculous. I spent most of last Wednesday at Gray’s Inn.”

“In court?”

The man’s color darkened. “I’ll be damned if I can see what business it is of yours.”

Sebastian met his angry stare with a bland smile. “Alibis are always such handy things to have, don’t you agree? If you’re lucky, it might not even occur to the authorities that you could easily have hired someone to do the dirty deed for you.”

Ellsworth brought his own glass to his lips and took a slow, thoughtful swallow before saying with commendable sangfroid, “Very true. But it does rather beg the question, does it not? I mean, why kill the lady in such a flamboyant and decidedly public way? Why not simply hire a couple of footpaths to attack her sedan chair one dark night?”

“Why not indeed?” agreed Sebastian. “Or a highwayman to hold up her carriage on Hampstead Heath? You’ve obviously given some thought to it.”

Ellsworth let out a short, sharp laugh before leaning forward to say, “My debts aren’t that pressing.” His lips were still smiling, but a hard-edged warning glittered in his gray eyes.

“Rumor has it otherwise.”

“Rumor has it wrong.”

Sebastian rested his head against the chair’s high upholstered back. “So what did you think of her? Your late aunt, I mean.” Anyone seeing them from across the room would assume they were having a nice, friendly conversation. “Strange to think of her as your aunt when she was—what? Nearly ten years your junior?”

“Not so strange in our world, is it? London is full of gently bred young ladies panting like bitches in heat after a title or a fortune. Or both.”

Bitter, ugly words. But then, the reality was harsh. Firstborn sons—men of wealth and title—were shamelessly pursued and fought over, while younger sons, and sons of younger sons such as Ellsworth, were seen as dangerous pariahs to be shunned, guarded against, despised.

“And the young Lady Guinevere wanted both?” said Sebastian.

“A prime article like her? Why should she settle for anything less?” Ellsworth’s lips curled into a sneer. “Surely you don’t think she married my uncle for
love?
”

Sebastian studied the brooding, angry lines of the other man’s face. He was remembering the time, years ago at Eton, when some baronet’s son had eased Ellsworth out of the captainship of his house’s football team. Two weeks later, in a rough and confused tumult of play, the boy’s arm had been broken so badly he had to be sent home for the rest of the year. There were whispers at the time that Ellsworth had deliberately snapped the boy’s arm, although of course nothing could ever be proved. Sebastian heard later that the boy’s arm never did heal right.

“And your uncle?” said Sebastian. “Did he have reason to regret his marriage, do you think?”

Ellsworth gave a harsh laugh. “What? Apart from the fact she was playing him false?”

Sebastian had half expected it, and still the words troubled him more than he could have explained. “You mean with the Regent?”

“I wouldn’t know about the Regent. But you don’t really believe Anglessey fathered that so-called heir his lady wife was carrying, do you?”

“Older men than he have succeeded in siring sons.”

“Perhaps.” Ellsworth tossed down the dregs of his wine and pushed to his feet. “But not this one.”

Chapter 15

T
he breeches were of the finest plush velvet, with a coat of satin-trimmed blue velvet to match. Together with the silk stockings and snowy white shirt, they formed a livery fit for the footman of a duke—or at least for the boards of the Covent Garden Theater, which is where the costume was normally seen.

Twitching uncomfortably in his starched shirt, Tom supposed there were some fellows who might find the ensemble attractive. But as far as he was concerned, the rig made him look like a popinjay.

“Stop fidgeting,” said Kat, her normally precise diction slurred by the need to speak around a mouthful of pins.

Tom fell obediently still. His back itched unmercifully, but he didn’t move. He had a sneaking suspicion Miss Kat wasn’t above sticking one of her pins into him, if he didn’t do what he was told.

They were in Miss Kat’s dressing room at the theater, and she was busy adapting to his small frame the page’s livery she had borrowed from the theater’s costume collection. “I don’t see why we’re doin’ this,” Tom grumbled. “I got me a bang-up livery already, what the Viscount give me when he made me his tiger.”

“Huh.” Miss Kat moved around to do something to a seam of the breeches. “One look at that yellow-and-black-striped waistcoat of yours, and Lord Anglessey’s servants would mark you down as coming from the household of a sporting gentleman. Those in service have very decided opinions on the subject of young sporting gentleman, and few of those opinions are charitable. You’d be lucky not to find yourself sent off with a flea in your ear.”

Tom swallowed the argument he’d been about to make. The humiliation of yesterday’s failure to scout out anything of use at the Pavilion still burned within him. He was determined to wheedle the information Devlin needed from Lady Anglessey’s servants, and if that meant dressing up like some eighteenth-century fop—well, then, he’d do it.

Tom craned his neck to get a better look at the seam Miss Kat was taking in. “That’s crooked.”

“I’m an actress, not a seamstress.” She bit off her thread and sat back on her heels to survey her handiwork. “And this livery belongs to the theater. You tear it, or spill anything on it, and I’ll take the cost of it out of your hide.”

Tom stepped off the low box she’d had him standing on. “’Ow would I tear it?”

She laughed, an open, spontaneous laugh that made him grin. She was bang-up, for being such a famous actress and all. She was also the best pickpocket he’d ever seen, although he supposed most folks didn’t know that.

“Tell me about this man, the one who was following his lordship yesterday,” she said in an offhand kind of way as she bent to assemble her scattered pins and threads.

“I didn’t see ’im afore ’e come up with us. But then, no one’s got eyes and ears like his lordship’s.”

She nodded, not looking around. “Do you think he might have something to do with this murder his lordship is looking into?”

“Don’t know what else it could be about. I mean, it stands to reason, don’t it? You go pokin’ around in a murder, you’re liable to stir up some weery desperate people.”

Tom thought it was all pretty exciting, but then he got a look at Miss Kat’s face and he suddenly regretted having said so much. He snatched up the ridiculous scrap of satin and velvet that was supposed to serve him as a hat. “Well, I’m off, then.”

Her face cleared so suddenly he was left wondering if he’d simply imagined the troubled shadows he thought he’d seen there. “Remember,” she told him as he balanced the tricorne on his head and started to dash off. “No scuffling with the linkboys.” She raised her voice to shout after him. “And no eating or drinking.”

T
HE
M
ARQUIS OF
A
NGLESSEY’S TOWN HOUSE
was an enormous pile on Mount Street.

Tom stood on the flagged sidewalk, his neck aching as he tipped his head to look up four stories and more to the stately house’s pedimented gray slate roof. The Marquis himself was obviously still in Brighton, for the knocker was off the door. But his servants had already draped the house in mourning, festooning the tall, silent windows with crepe and hanging a black wreath on the entrance.

Adjusting his starched stock, Tom marched up the short flight of steps and used his fist to beat a lively tattoo on the shiny, black-painted panels of the front door.

When there was no answer, he pounded harder.

Beside him, an iron railing separated the main front door from the area steps that led down to the service entrance. When Tom knocked a third time, the service door jerked open and a middle-aged woman with a bulbous red nose, plump cheeks, and wiry gray hair covered by an old-fashioned mop cap stuck out her head and peered up at him. “What you doing there, lad? Can’t you see the knocker’s off the door?”

Tom held up the folded, sealed letter Miss Kat had prepared for him. The letter was empty, of course, but then he had no intention of giving it to anyone. “I got a message here, for Lord Anglessey from Sir James Aston. He says I’m to give it into Lord Anglessey’s hand and no one else’s. Only, ’ow’m I supposed to get anyone’s attention when there’s no knocker?”